Behind-the-scenes with ExpertVoice and REAAL

Did you know that most amino acid products are made with duck feathers and human hair?

Neither did I. But that changed within the first few minutes of speaking with REAAL, makers of a clean, science-backed, non-duck-feather-or-human-hair-sourced amino acid product.

As a digital storyteller at ExpertVoice, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a plethora of brands across a variety of industries, from outdoor to hunt to pet, so I’m used to learning new things every day — but this one little tidbit of information caught me completely off guard. I knew right away that working with REAAL was going to be a unique experience. We would need to give special attention to the things that made REAAL’s amino acid supplements different from any other product on the market.

I’m going to take you behind the scenes of the ExpertVoice creative process with REAAL Nutrition, from beginning to finished product.

Getting to know the brand’s goals

Before we created any content with REAAL, we needed to sit down with the brand to learn more about its goals. REAAL is a young brand, and it wanted to get retail associates familiar with a new, patented product that offers a wide array of benefits.

The team identified three goals we’d need to keep in mind when we were creating content for REAAL:

3. Get products into the hands of experts to promote first-hand experience and better recommendations.

Developing a strategy

After meeting with the REAAL team, our creative team got together to talk strategy for our content and video shoot. We brainstormed several ideas, but everything revolved around how unique the REAAL product truly is. After all, not every new brand boasts 40 years of research or a patent upon product launch. In order to make this brand stand out in a very saturated market, we had to demonstrate how it was different from other products available in stores. And what sets the REAAL products apart? The science, the research and the patent.

We had ten minutes of content to work with. Can you imagine how long it would take a brand rep to visit thousands of stores across the country and chat with every single employee or associate for ten minutes?

We decided to break the content up into two pieces. By breaking the content up this way, we’d be able to keep the user engaged with the two distinct messages we wanted to convey. The first piece would tell the brand’s story through the lens of research and development – which was REAAL’s unique value prop. The next piece of content would explore the product and the features that set it apart from common protein powders on the market (whey and BCAAs). To tie the content together, we would feature the same brand expert, Ian Bell, throughout both pieces of content. Ian knew his stuff — not to mention the fact that he was an avid user of the product — and so we decided to feature him on camera in our ExpertVoice video shoot.

Shoot day

We welcomed our brand talent, Ian Bell, into the office on a rainy Salt Lake City day. He’d been traveling for several weeks but was still enthusiastic, and it shone through on camera. By the end of our video shoot, everyone on the crew was convinced they’d need to try the product for themselves.

Typically, video shoots require a large amount of prep and interview time, but Ian was so well-spoken and confident that we were able to capture all the video we needed before our scheduled lunch break.

Finished product

A few weeks after the video shoot, we presented REAAL with an interactive, e-learning experience that checked all three of the boxes we’d established from the start: It grew brand awareness, it educated experts, and, with a nice incentive, it would soon be getting product into the hands of real experts to test.

REAAL was thrilled with the finished product, and, after incorporating final edits, we published the site to ExpertVoice. Two weeks after that, the brand had already received 350 orders — and several online product recommendations — from a relatively small audience. We know many more word-of-mouth recommendations are happening in retail stores.

Working with brands like REAAL to solve a problem is why I love my job. I’m excited to watch the brand continue to grow — and I’m hopeful my muscles might just do the same.